Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Forty-eight hours ago, or four months ago, who’s to say anymore, the second trailer for “Star Wars Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker” dropped to much fanfare. “This is your fight,” we hear Luke Skywalker advising Rey, the Taylor Swift of the Western Reaches. And that may be true, but this is also a nostalgia trip in the guise of a summation of the series and so half the trailer is just a cavalcade of green lights at the end of the pier in the form of images of past “Star Wars.” I got so exhausted I almost laid down for a nap in the middle of it. But I stayed awake, and so I saw the end where Rey, the Taylor Swift of the Western Reaches, is sporting a red lightsaber. That’s red, and that’s a potential problem, see, because red connotes Evil in the “Star Wars” universe and, wait! Is Rey the Katy Perry of the Western Reaches now?! Maybe, who knows, but Reddit’s got some theories which is all you need to know about how “Star Wars”, my beloved “Star Wars”, long ago jumped the shark. I wish a Knight of the Old Republic was an Internet ombudsman.

Anyway. This new lightsaber drop got me to thinking about my favorite use of a lightsaber in the whole “Star Wars” saga – Real Edition and Ersatz Editions I & II. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t involve Luke or Darth! It doesn’t even involve Obi-Wan, though I’ve always dug his pulling the lightsaber at Mos Eisley like it’s the Jets and the Sharks under the highway. No, my favorite use of a lightsaber involves Han Solo and it happens on Hoth.

You know what I’m talking about. Luke has escaped the Wampa and passed out in the snow and Han goes looking for him by Tauntaun and finds him but then his Tauntaun dies and so Han has to erect the emergency shelter. But he can’t just leave Luke lying out there in the snow; he’ll freeze to death! So he scoops up Luke’s lightsaber, gets the thing turned on, a moment which Ford brilliantly accentuates with a kind of “uh”, as one might in a moment of unsure DIY plumbing, transforming “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age” into nothing more than a shiny tool for ripping up Tauntaun guts, which, frankly, is the kind of unprepossessing vérité nodding at nothing more than primal necessity that could really benefit the summation of Ersatz Edition II.